Tweet This

Digital transformation is what drives new investments in information technology today and what may finally get the U.S. economy growing at a faster pace. But while we hear a lot about digital transformation today, the term is rarely defined. Instead, we typically get a list of the latest digital technologies to impact enterprises—mobile devices, social networks, cloud computing, big data analytics, etc.—and very little guidance regarding how to go about the desired transformation. An exception that proves the rule is Isaac Sacolick, a CIO who has made sharing (on his blog) practical advice about digital transformation an important dimension of his professional life.

“Transformation is a mindset,” Isaac Sacolick told me last week. He recently joined Greenwich Associates, a leading provider of global market intelligence and advisory services to the financial services industry, as its Global CIO and Managing Director. Before that he was CIO of McGraw Hill Construction, providing data and intelligence to the construction industry, CIO of BusinessWeek Magazine, a founder and COO at TripConnect, a travel industry social network, and CTO at PowerOne Media, providing software as a service to the newspaper industry.

With his unique background as both an entrepreneur and a senior information technology executive for companies who have made data the core of their business, Sacolick offers five tips for leading a digital transformation.

Define what digital transformation means to your business

“Digital transformation is not just about technology and its implementation,” says Sacolick, “it’s about looking at the business strategy through the lens of technical capabilities and how that changes how you are operating and generating revenues.”

He counsels starting at the top and looking at what the business is trying to accomplish, rather than focusing on the technology or how IT operates. This could be “a specific project or business initiative, a revenue growth objective, required costs savings or meeting competitive benchmarks.” Identifying what role the collection, analysis, and “monetization” of data play in these strategic initiatives is a key dimension of a digital transformation.